


The Very Improbable Yet Somehow True Life of One Penny Parker

by LaLoupDeLaNord



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Female Peter Parker, I dont have a plan for this but I'm gay and depressed, Multi, Penny Parker - Freeform, Penny has big 'Do you listen to Girl in Red?' vibes, huh gayyyyyy, skater penny bc I'm trash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaLoupDeLaNord/pseuds/LaLoupDeLaNord
Summary: Its a tale as old as time; Nerdy kid gets bitten by a radioactive spider, loses an uncle and dedicates their life to fighting crime.Only this time, the nerdy kid is called Penny, and life is hard for a Spider-Girl.(Its a Penny Parker AU y'all! Idk what the plot is yet, but there are plans for Iron Dad and some wholesome gay times.)
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72





	The Very Improbable Yet Somehow True Life of One Penny Parker

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I haven't written prose in forever, so please bear with me, but feel free to leave any constructive criticism in the comments - Ya gal's gotta get her mojo back.

There’s a lot of things that the movies don’t tell you about New York; it stinks, the ground is sticky all the time and its loud. Throw super enhanced senses from a radioactive spider bite into the mix, and the city suddenly becomes _very_ loud. As in, actually unbearably loud. Really bright, too. Penny Parker’s solution? Industrial grade ear protectors tastefully disguised as chunky headphones and rose-tinted sunglasses. Sure she might look like a wannabe musician or a drug dealer, but hey, at least she could move around outside without freaking out or getting really pissed off, and given that she’d managed to make it through the school day relatively unscathed so far, she wanted to keep that winning streak going.

First, she’d aced that latest chemistry test despite her worries on a few questions. Then she’d managed to avoid Flash for most of the day, only being knocked into a locker by him once, a new record. Add that to the fact that the bruises from stopping those muggers the other night had healed to the point where none of the other girls had noticed them while getting changed for gym and she’d managed to go the whole day without a single weird interaction with MJ. So, all in all, a pretty damn good day. Penny would give it a solid A minus, a 9/10. Even if those weird moments with MJ were starting to become more and more common, discounting today, each one leaving her feeling weird and kind of ill but also kind of breathless and giddy, but the thought of her alone made Penny feel nervous and shitty and-

 _Nope,_ Penny thought, quickly turning onto a quieter street. _We’re not going down that particular train of thought, not today._ Hopping onto her skateboard and giving a few pushes, she let the rumble of her wheels on the sidewalk travel up her legs and through her body, washing away any and all of the big, strange and scary thoughts about MJ that she didn’t want to unpack any time soon. She kept skating her way home, opting for the streets with smoother sidewalks so that her wheels would last a little longer. Sure, it was a couple minutes longer than her usual route, but she was in a good mood, so sue her. She spotted a cardboard box full of old electronics sitting in the entry to an alleyway, and goddamn it if Penny wasn’t curious. Her GameCube had died the other day, and from what she’d deduced, the disk reader had conked out. _Right as I finished the water temple, too,_ she thought to herself as she dismounted her board and squatted down in front of the box of discarded gadgets. _Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a DVD player or something so I can- YES!_

With a small cry of victory, Penny pulled an old DVD/VHS combo player out of the mess of wires and electronics, and after a cursory inspection for water damage, she tucked it under her arm and hopped back onto her board, skating the rest of the way home with a song in her heart, in too much of a good mood to pay any attention to the grumbles of other people on the street, or the really fancy car parked up next to her apartment building. She didn’t even mind that the elevator was broken, practically skipping up the stairs to the apartment she shared with her aunt. She let herself in, taking her off her earmuffs and sunglasses.

“Hey May, guess what?” She called out, trying to wiggle her keys back into her pocket and kick off her worn out Vans whilst juggling her board and her precious dumpster loot.

“So, like, I aced that chemistry test, y’know, that one I was worried about? Doesn’t matter, cause I got full marks, so maybe we could get like ice cream, or something to celebrate?” she continued as she strolled through the shabby but warm apartment to the kitchen/living room combo, brandishing her find. “But in more exciting news, I found this old DVD player by the side of the road, so maybe I can fix my GameCube and finish Zelda…”

Penny trailed off as she looked up and noticed that May wasn’t alone in the living room. Sitting next to her aunt at the breakfast bar thing that they ate it, eyebrow quirked and a small smile on his face, was Tony Stark. As in, ‘I am Iron Man’, Tony Stark. Prominent member of the Avengers, saviours of Earth, Tony Stark. The reason Penny got into science, Tony Stark. The man that saved her from one of those insane murder drones a few years back at the Stark Expo, the same one that was on posters plastered all over her walls, that Tony Stark.

Penny found herself finally understanding the phrase “like a deer in headlights” as she stared in open confusion at the billionaire casually lounging at their breakfast bar.

“Hey sweetie, how was school?” May, reading the shock on Penny’s face cut in, giving her niece a gentle verbal nudge back to reality.

“It was good. Test…aced.” Penny managed, still trying to reboot her brain and return to reality, despite the fact that she was fairly certain that Iron Man was in their kitchen, and she was still holding an abandoned DVD/VHS player aloft like a trophy.

“That’s great, Penny! But why didn’t you tell me about the internship?” May continued, jolting Penny back to the moment, prompting her to quickly lower the DVD player.

“…internship?” Penny echoed, glancing between her giddy looking aunt and the ever-suave Tony Stark, not sure if she should let her confusion show.

“Yeah, y’know, the internship that you applied for. And got.” Stark said, prompting May to give her a giddy grin, in turn allowing Stark to throw her a subtle wink.

He was obviously hiding something but was acting like Penny was in on it or at least telling her to play along but she’d never even been in the same room as him before let alone spoken to him so why was he here giving her conspiratory winks and talking about an internship that she hadn’t even heard of let alone applied for then he must be here for a reason which must mean-

_Oh no._

And all at once, her stomach sank, her heart started beating like a runaway train and her blood ran cold despite all the layers she wore to keep herself warm.

_He knows._

Doing her best to smother the fear she felt coiling around her insides, she did her best to answer with what she hoped was an understanding smile.

“Of course, sorry, just didn’t expect you to show up, Mr Stark.” She said, managing to keep the most of her anxiety out of her voice. She figured that if May noticed, she’d probably just put it down to nerves due to having her childhood hero in their apartment.

“ _You_ didn’t?” May asked, incredulously. “I didn’t even have any idea that this internship was a thing you were applying for.”

“Well,” Penny replied, rubbing the back of her head. “To be honest, May, it was such a long shot, that I wasn’t even going to apply in the first place, but Principle Morita really wanted all of the Decathlon team to apply anyway. I guess I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to get either of our hopes up – like I tried to forget about it afterwards cause I was so sure I wouldn’t get it.”

“But you did, and here we are!” Mr Stark said, cutting in with a confident clap and a PR smile. “I am sorry for dropping in like this, but I was in the area and I like to be spontaneous.” He continued, before turning to May.

“Although, while I’m here, I was actually hoping to go over a couple of things with Penelope in private, if that’s ok with you?”

May paused for a minute, as if she was assessing the man in front of her for the first time.

“If its ok with Penny, its ok with me.” She said, her tone guarded and with a subtle warning underneath it, before turning back to Penny.

“What do you think, sweetie?”

“Yeah, of course, not a problem!” Penny replied, hoping that her anxiety would be passed off as excitement. “We can talk in my room, if that’s ok, Mr Stark?”

Stark bowed his head in agreement and gestured.

“Lead the way Miss Parker.”

* * *

Tony Stark had seen a lot of weird things in his life, most of them in the last five years, but Penelope Parker was climbing the ranks of weird with every passing moment. Sure, he knew that she was the Spider themed vigilante he’d been looking into, but he didn’t really know her before today, and he was struggling to connect the videos he’d seen of the crime fighter catching buses with her bare hands and swinging through the streets of Queens to the reality in front of him.

Penny Parker was five-foot-nothing, wearing what looked like 2 sweatshirts and a flannel at least, with worn out denim pants, a pair of mismatched fuzzy socks and a beanie pulled tight around her ears. She propped her skateboard against the wall, dropped her schoolbag on her bed and set the ancient DVD player on her desk before turning to look at him, eyes wide with worry. She pulled out a pen and began clicking it nervously as he gave a practiced smile.

“First off, congrats on that chemistry test.” He said as he closed and locked the door behind him. At the sound of the lock clicking, the girl’s eyes narrowed, her shoulders hunched, and she stopped clicking her pen.

“Don’t lock the door.” She said, with a surprising amount of firmness in her voice.

“Understood”, Tony replied, unlocking the door and raising his hands in what he hoped was a reassuring move, before slowly examining the room around him. The clicking started up again as he took in the posters and photographs taped to the walls, the study notes on the wall above her desk, which was covered in random pieces of electronics, a taped together old tv, an ancient game console and what looked like a homemade computer.

“Look Mr Stark, I don’t know why you’re here,” she started. “I mean, we both know that I didn’t apply for that internship, not that I don’t want to work for you, in fact I’d love to work for Stark Industries, but even if I did, it seems a bit weird for you to show up at a sixteen year old’s apartment in Queens to tell her she got a position. I mean if you’re asking me to be your intern then…”

Tony gradually tuned her out as he kept inspecting the teen’s room. He knew that she knew why he was really here, but he figured he should let her spin her wheels to let out some of that nervous energy while he looked for where she was hiding her ‘suit’. After spotting a likely looking attic space, he turned back to her and cut in suddenly.

“I suppose I am asking you to be my intern, but not at Stark Industries.” He said, turning to face her. “It’s actually part of one of my other ventures.”

“Other ventures?” she echoed; brow furrowed in confusion. “What kind of venture?”

“That kind.” He said, pointing over the girl’s shoulder to the poster of Iron Man on her wall. “And don’t even try and deflect and say you’re no good at graphic design.”

While Penny glanced over her shoulder at the poster, Tony picked up the suspiciously conveniently placed broom and nudged open the attic space.

“Wait don’t-” Penny’s protest was cut off as her bright red and blue suit fell out of the attic, only for Tony to catch it mid-air. To call it a suit would be too flattering to be true; it was little more than a red padded hoodie and thick blue sweatpants and a set of chunky homemade goggles, though he supposed considering the apparent lack of funds and materials available to her, Penny had done an ok job.

“Ok, the padding makes sense; doubles as basic protection and insulation from the wind, but what’s up with these goggles?” He said as he held them up to his eyes, squinting as he looked through them. “There’s a shutter on these, what for?” he asked as he opened and closed the mechanism. Not getting a response, he glanced up, and noticed that Penny had gone totally silent, and was now sitting on her bed, with her knees drawn up to her chest.

“Woah, what’s up, you ok?” He asked, sitting next to her.

She looked away for a moment, before whispering back to him so quietly he had to lean in to make her out.

“Why are you here?”

“In short? Cause I’m a fan.” He replied after a brief moment of consideration.

Penny glanced up at him, eyes crinkled in confusion as he pulled out his phone and brought up a video he’d found on local CCTV footage of a woman being accosted by a man with a knife on the street, before Penny swooped in, all suited up and saved the day, leaving the man for the cops and walking the woman home.

“I’ve been following you for some time, and I gotta admit, I like your style kid. Small time hero, handling the little things that happen every day. Its good. You’re good.” He said, doing his best to be reassuring. “As the Cap-sicle would say, you’ve got heart. I came here to offer you backup.”

“Backup?” came the small reply.

“Yeah, backup. Like if a situation turns south or into something you can’t handle, you can contact us and someone can come and help. There’s usually at least one Avenger in New York at any time, so there’ll probably be someone to help.” He said with a sad smile. “But its more than that. Our Government, along with most of the rest of the world’s, are thinking about drawing up some pretty scary legislation that’d be bad news for any enhanced individuals, people like you. The rest of the Avengers and I want to get you onside in case things turn nasty to give you a better chance of dodging potential problems.”

By the time he’d finished talking, Penny had lowered her knees and was looking at him with a laser focus, and he could see her brain working overtime to process everything he was saying, and everything he wasn’t.

“Define ‘get me onside’ and ‘potential problems’.” She said, and he couldn’t help but smile at her intensity.

“Sure,” he said. “’Potential problems’ are anything from cops being difficult to laws that would require you to publicly register your identities with the government or face jail-time, and by ‘get you onside’, we’d do some work with you, let people know that you’re part of the Avengers, at least in a professional capacity, with the goal being that if any laws were passed people would be less inclined to mess with you, because they’d be messing with us by extension.”

Penny was silent for a moment, before the rapid _click click click_ of her pen started up again.

“You want me to join the Avengers?” she asked.

“That’s up to you, although I don’t think the others would be totally keen on the idea.”

She looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Tony said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. “When I told the team I was going to talk to Spider-Girl today, I didn’t actually mention that she’s a sixteen-year-old high school student. If they knew that they would probably have a lot of issues with you joining, because it would imply you leaving high school.”

“And you don’t have any issues with it?” He gestured over his shoulder at the home-made computer on Penny’s desk.

“I’m assuming you made that from scratch?” She nodded. “What’s it running?”

“A custom hybrid of Mac and Windows. I wrote the code myself.”

“Not bad. Where’d you get the parts?”

Penny looked down a little, blushing.

“A dumpster.”

“The reason I’m not worried is that with an achievement like that and a recommendation from me, you could walk into any college you want. I’ve seen your test results, at this point school is a formality for you. That’s why I’m not worried.”

Penny lowered her head thoughtfully, brow furrowed in concentration, the pen still clicking away. Tony took this opportunity to get a closer look at Penny herself. If he didn’t already know she fought crime almost every night, he certainly wouldn’t have thought so to look at her - she just seemed _small_. Even with her height aside, she was looked like she was slender under all the hoodies, and her hands seemed far too delicate to be punching muggers, each nimble finger ending with black painted nails, with little red hourglass shapes added to the middle nails. Looking back up at her face, Tony had to stifle a laugh at what he assumed to be her ‘concentrating face’; her button nose was scrunched up like her brow, and he could see her tongue poking out from between her lips slightly. Combined with the curls escaping from under her hat and the freckles splashed across her cheeks, he was suddenly hit by how much she looked like a kid, an uncomfortable reminder that she was just sixteen and very much still a kid, and couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing the right thing.

“Okay.” She said suddenly, drawing him out of his ruminations.

“Huh?”

“I said okay,” she repeated. “I’ll do it.”

“Great!” Tony replied, easily slipping the TV smile back on as he clapped his hands together. “So how about you come by the tower on Monday after school? When do you finish school? 3pm? 4?”

“3.30pm,” Penny said, confusion evident in her voice. “But why am I coming by the tower? Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, meet me out on a roof or something?”

“We could, absolutely.” He said. “But this way we can sit down and talk about your new suit, and then set up your internship schedule.”

“New suit?” Penny replied, bewildered. “Internship? Mr Stark, I thought you said the internship wasn’t real?”

“Oh, it isn’t.” he said with a nod. “But you said you’d like to work at Stark Industries, and since I figured it’d give you a good alibi and a way for us to keep in touch and maybe work together in the lab, I’m going to ask Pepper to make it real.”

He leaned back a little and scratched at his goatee, oblivious to the fact that Penny was openly gaping at him.

“Besides, she keeps saying it’d be good for the company. Or me. Or both, I can’t remember.” He muttered, mostly to himself.

“So,” he said, turning back to Penny. “That sound okay to you?”

Penny, still gaping slightly, nodded, prompting a small chuckle from Tony.

“Great,” he said, offering a hand for her to shake. “Glad to have you on board, Penelope.”

“Penny,” she said, taking his hand, her grip firm, her eyes focused. “My friends call me Penny.”

“Ok Penny,” he replied with a smile. “Welcome to the team.”

They shook.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Full disclosure, I don't super have a plan for this, and wasn't initially planning on doing anything with it, I just wanted to write about this version of Penny that had been living in my head for a while. But if you guys wanna see more of this, please feel free to let me know in the comments!  
> I can't afford actual food, but love in the comments will give me life!
> 
> Stay safe and love each other!


End file.
